It was commencement night June 16 for this year’s crop of Canadian Film Centre residents who premiered their short dramas at Toronto’s Uptown Theatre and thanked the production community for their support with the first annual Payback Awards, sponsored by Playback.

‘This is the future of Canadian cinema,’ said cfc artistic director Dezso Magyar of its 1997 students, and Film Centre creator Norman Jewison added that their prospects look good: over its 10-year run 95% of the residents have gone on to produce for film and tv.

A bent for youth/young adult coming of age themes emerged as a common thread among many of the six premiering films: Cal Coons’ Day Pass with a young boy learning some lessons about truth, family and growing up, written by Coons and produced by D.J. Anderson; Paul Fox’s Hockey Cards, a script from Michael Melski and produced by Debra Plotkin touching on the tainting of childhood her’es; Shaun Cathcart’s Shift, a cinema verite portrait of teenage awakening penned by Tricia Fish and produced by Dean Perlmutter; Chris Grismer’s Uncle, the drama of a young woman who receives more attention from a newly divorced uncle than she bargains for, scripted by Grismer and Melski and produced by Chan Park and Allison Lewis; Andrew Currie’s Night of the Living, the story of an imaginative boy who becomes convinced his alcoholic father is a zombie, written by Eriksen & Currie with Paul Barkin producing; and Su Rynard’s Strands, written by Tricia Fish and scripted by Shelley Eriksen, a modern-day Frankenstein story exploring the repercussions of genetic science, produced by Hadley Obodiac.

The films, produced in association with Alliance Communications, the participation of The Harold Greenberg Fund, and distribution sponsor Viacom Canada, were also the result of the efforts of over 600 production volunteers. Four individuals who made a marked contribution of their time, goods and services to the production of the shorts were honored with 1997 Payback Awards: Walter Pacifico, Effy Papadopoulos and Film Effects’ Susan Furniotis who has supported the Centre as a production partner since its inception in 1988

In an effort to raise funds, the cfc joined forces with the Motion Picture Foundation of Canada and the Toronto International Film Festival’s Film Crew two nights later to present a fundraiser screening of Batman & Robin. The event netted $125,000. Following the film a silent auction garnered $5,100.